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My apartment building is renovating its hallways. The problem is that they now look like the hallways from Stanley Kubrick’s version of The Shining. Seriously, I keep expecting to see a pair of creepy dead twins down there. The naked, hanging light bulbs don’t help. I’m pretty sure they are scaring trick-or-treaters away.

Finished reading Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness, which was both amusing and interesting. I don’t think it told me much I didn’t already know (I’ve read a lot of those "science of happiness" books!), but it told me a lot of things I’ve forgotten.

I made myself rather sick eating too much sugar free candy. Coincidentally, I had a dentist appointment today. No cavities! Also, I apparently have one, lonely wisdom tooth, not impacted or anything, just sort of hanging out, singing a little song to itself. OK, maybe not that last bit.

It turns out naturopathic doctors cannot, under any circumstances, order lab work for patients in NY state. While I believe everyone should have healthcare, I fear that most of what would actually help me would not be covered by a government regulated system, and that that I would be penalized for requesting it. I feel like many problems stem from the culture underlying the health care, and perhaps not the lack of access per se.

Donated blood today, as I have not much money to give the poor, but I am full of blood. I shall have to remember that my blood type is A positive, as it seems like the sort of thing I ought to know consistently. Today, my iron count was “excellent” ( a year and a half ago it was borderline low, but stop menstruating for 1a year, and your hemoglobin count goes way up!), my blood pressure was “great” (100/60; it used to be borderline or “surprisingly” high), and my temperature was over a degree below normal (97.2 F degrees, which sounds all kinds of alarms in my head about thyroid hormone, but didn’t seem to phase the lab tech guy in the least). I continue to have “really great veins” for this sort of thing.

They told me to have juice and cookies afterward but did not actually provide either of these things. This is fine, because I’m off sugar and most carbohydrates and packed an appropriate snack this morning, but it did seem rather cruel of the blood bank to tease like that.